Tool outputs expanded by default — no setting to collapse, inconsistent across machines

Resolved 💬 5 comments Opened May 5, 2026 by CGDavid Closed Jul 3, 2026

In a recent version of Claude Code, tool call outputs (Read, Edit, Bash, etc.) are rendered fully expanded by default in the transcript. This makes long sessions with many file reads very hard to navigate — scrolling back through past turns becomes painful because every tool output takes significant vertical space.

Two things suggest this is a recent change or A/B experiment:

  • On a different laptop with the same account, tool outputs are still collapsed by default.
  • The behavior changed on this machine without a config change on my side.

Tried without success:

  • verbose: false in ~/.claude/settings.json
  • viewMode: "default"
  • DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 (in case it was a Statsig gate)

Request: a user-level setting to collapse tool outputs by default (e.g. toolOutputCollapsed: true or extending viewMode with a compact option), and/or honoring the existing verbose: false for this rendering.

Use case: solo founder running many long Claude Code sessions per day; expanded tool outputs make session review and scrollback significantly slower.

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